GD, of course Barry J is right, but after all the treachery Rudd indulged in, the least he could do is stop trying to airbrush away the achievements of the last three years which were more than just a couple of big policies. IMHO, Rudd would be doing better if he took a leaf out of the abbott’s book and whitewashed himself and laying the blame for the instability/chaos/leadershit/poisoning of JG on the abbott and his media backers.

Rudd made a big mistake in saying the government did not have a mandate fior a carbon ‘tax’. A carbon price was part if the deal with the indpendents, so with their support there was a mandate. Rudd has handed the other side a lovely big stick with that stupid remark.

Gravel,
From the beginning I said it would be a good outcome if Labor won and Rudd lost his seat. Over the past couple of days I’ve thought it would also be loverly if the abbott lost his seat as well – that way one would cancel the other out so far as seats won is concerned, and we get rid of the two most obnoxious leaders in the country’s history.

BB,
We have a simple choice. LNP led by Abbott or ALP led by Rudd. Make up your mind. Nothing is achieved by the continual criticism of the ALP leader.

There may be a binary choice when it comes down to voting – “Rudd” or “Abbott” – but that doesn’t mean one’s thinking has to be binary. We as humans are blessed with the ability to nuance concepts and to decide which is the better of two alternatives, on balance, after consideration of everything.

I can dislike Rudd and still vote for him. Millions on the other side of politics will be doing the same thing re. Rudd.

It’s unfortunate that not wanting someone to be PM – the “Negative Case” – is the prevailing situation for me, many other Labor voters, and many Liberal voters as well with their candidate, but that’s the reality. And it wouldn’t be the first time I had to vote for Labor with a peg on my nose.

Rudd has never been able to cut through, in my mind. Right back in “Wheat For Weapons” days I thought he failed to prosecute the case hard enough. He always seemed to stop short of the killer line, the knockout punch that would have put Howard on the mat over that issue.

I’ll give him “Decisive” on the GFC. He was the man in charge and, no matter whose idea the GFC response was (I suspect, not Rudd’s), he didn’t drop the ball, and those policy actions pulled the country through, where other countries wallowed.

But then came The “Mea Culpa”. Why on Earth Rudd dissed the HIP (Pink Batts) program that gave jobs to so many, and which was almost the model of a well-run stimulus program, is beyond me. The issue was nearly dead. He was almost in the clear. The Opposition had just about exhausted its ammunition on it. The Insiders interview at the end of the week was the media’s last chance to throw gotchas at him. He went on the show, grovelled to Cassidy, sacked the minister a couple of days later, cancelled the program and, in so doing, validated every single criticism – justified and unjustified – that had been thrown at him over Insulation.

This was morphed pretty quickly into a general meme of “failure” for anything concerned with the GFC response.

Pretty soon the words “Pink Batts” or “School Halls” were enough to shut down a discussion on almost any political topic. I saw this happen on shows like Q&A multiple times. “Pink Batts” would be uttered, the audience burst into laughter and applause, Tony Jones would “move on” to another topic.

As late as a couple of weeks ago, “Pink Batts” was still metaphorically burning houses down and killing kids, as the new coroner’s report from Queensland was handed down. That report was the beginning of Rudd descent back into the realm of being just another chancer trying to get elected. His polling numbers started dropping from that date.

But there were plenty of other bobby dazzlers: giving jobs to ex-Coalition ministers was one of them. The cushy sinecures that Costello received directly from Rudd, and that Downer received indirectly, due to Rudd’s intercession with the UN, did absolutely nothing to stop them from popping up at inopportune moments to tear the political shit out of their erstwhile benefactor… probably to prove just how little they believed they owed him. It always happens when giant egos are involved.

The Oceanic Viking was another. It took a month to get the ship sailing again while Rudd prevaricated, trying to prove what a master negotiator he was, and when it arrived here the pirates who hijacked it, with all their demands fulfilled, received preferential treatment. They should have been thrown in the clink and the key dropped down a drain hole. We now know that Rudd was already showing symptoms of indecision, an inability to do anything except call for more reports, shutting out even senior ministers and advisors, running a one-man band.

His friendship with the media… that lasted about five seconds after he clawed back the Prime Ministership (ditto for his new BFF, Julie Bishop, whom Abbott now freely touts as potentially “the best Foreign Minister in history”, before she’s even been given the job and had a chance to fuck it up, as she surely will).

Rudd’s big criticism of Murdoch is another case in point. “It’s a free country, he can say what he wants, but I don’t have to like it,” was and continues to be an incredibly pissweak response to the hatred expressed daily by Murdoch’s newspapers and the stitch up Rudd appears to be walking into.

Rudd should have pointed out that Murdoch has very bad form in the credibility stakes, the corruption states and utter bastardry stakes. He should have referred to Murdoch’s giving up his right to vote in Australian politics for money and power in America. All he did in the end was to pat Murdoch on the head and say “I respectfully disagree.”

If a foreign newspaper owner had criticised Abbott in the way Murdoch feels free (under clear licence from Rudd) to criticise Rudd, the Liberals would be all over it like flies over dogshit. Australians have an innate disdain for meddlesome foreigners (we saw even Boris Johnson keep his mouth shut on Talking Pictures this morning). To go after Murdoch as a man who had abandoned his birthplace and therefore had no right to come back here and slag off the nation’s government would have been an easy win for Rudd, but he stopped short… again. Maybe he thinks he can still win Rupert over?

Rudd’s basic problem is that he wants everyone to be his friend. To give effect to this he’ll get into bed with anyone who winks an eye or flashes a smile at him, especially if they’re what would normally be classed as “an enemy”.

He likes to think he’s adored by everyone. He’s getting to be well-known for this character flaw, and to be exploited for it.

Murdoch, Abbott, Costello, Downer, Bishop and a thousand others sure took him to the cleaners over it, touting for him when he was in exile, then stabbing him, not in the back, but in the front, for all the world to see, but only after he’d done their dirty work for them.

Gillard, for all her faults and foibles, at least knew who The Enemy really was. She had few delusions that she could win these people over, and gave up trying. At least that way she didn’t live a life of disappointment, waiting for the phone to ring with another sycophant on the other end of the line, whispering sweet nothings into her ears.

Rudd, today was asked to criticise Gillard, and the government. He said he wouldn’t do it. Good for him! But he didn’t praise it, either. Indeed, he dissed the ETS – a major, perhaps the major policy issue involving, over the years, monumental angst, effort and heartache (and one he couldn’t manage to get through the parliament, because when it came to negotiating, he preferred to negotiate with his enemies, not his more natural allies in the Greens) – as “not having a mandate”.

What a bloody traitor! What a bloody idiot, for giving Barrie Cassidy another “Mea Culpa” moment today!

In those few uninspiring, throwaway words Rudd completely validated the entire 3-year long attack on the Carbon Tax, Gillard’s integrity, the shock jock hate machine that replays the “There will be no Carbon Tax…” line a hundred times a day (sometimes to cheesy music), and the national whingeing about how Australia was going broke because of it. In doing so he probably gave Abbott the election. It was another Pink Batts moment as he conceded (without very much pressure from Cassidy to do so at all… it appeared to be premeditated on Rudd’s part) that the single most vicious attack on the Gillard government during it’s tenure was, “frankly”, spot-on.

All that remains is for Abbott to say, “But they’re keeping it anyway, unless you elect me to get rid of it,” and the stupidity will be complete.

Yet, I’m voting Labor despite Rudd. I’m hoping that his ministers may be able to keep him in check, at least for a while, until he gets the boot again, this time for good, and a grown up is installed as PM.

Despite this, whatever faults, insecurities and outright character flaws Rudd may have, Abbott has got a whole bunch of baggage that makes him inconceivable as an alternative. Take Rudd’s flaws, add steroids, shoot them up with crack cocaine, and supply methamphetamine for a chaser and that comes close to Tony Abbott.

I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this way. There are plenty of Labor voters who agree, and there are certainly just as many Liberal supporters taking exactly the same line with Abbott – vote him in, then get rid of him.

It’s not entirely a defeatist stance to take either. If there was more mature consideration out there in the Polity – who will they vote for, warts and all? – we might be able to get past the incessant beauty contest and Reality TV schlock – make-up girls, Shut-Up Moments, who went on Fifties Throwback Annabell Crabbe’s poxy cooking show (and who didn’t), the use of notes, and all the rest of the diversions the Opposition is using to try to play down the clock until September 8th, without telling us anything about what they intend to do to Australia.

It’s certain to involve generous use of suppositories, and in that I think Abbott made a Freudian slip. He was thinking about his future life as PM and let out a sly brain fart that stank like hell. Rudd seems unable to turn faux pas like that into hard election-winning scoring shots.

He should toughen up and get vicious and stop trying to be everybody’s best pal.

From Charlie Pickering, on the vapidity of the election campaign.
“If this election were being held in the US, this week’s political discussions would have been almost entirely about Syria. The campaigns would have been expected to detail their plans for dealing with one of the most complicated geopolitical crises of modern times. People would be debating about whether the candidates passed the ”commander-in-chief test”, showing preparedness to lead the nation through times of international tumult.

BB
I am not the wordsmith that you are but I will attempt to respond. Did not Julia make mistakes? Two that rankled me at the time were:
(1) agreeing to calling the price on carbon a “tax”. innocuous as it was at the time , handing the opposition the opportunity of conducting the “great big new tax on everything” campaign.
(2) Her failure to put the Poker Machine legislation to the House. Defeat of the Bill would not have caused her to resign as Confidence of the House is only attached to Money Bills and motions of No Confidence. Wilkie would have seen that some of his fellow Independents did not support him and the criticism and kerfuffle surrounding this issue would not have occurred.
The fact that Julia made mistakes did not in anyway undermine my support and admiration for her or the Party. I did not participate in continual criticism of her or the Party by voice or print.
My belief that the ALP was the better Party to govern remained strong. Constructive criticism is a good thing. Destructive criticism of a person or organisation achieves nothing. I rest my case.

With the coalition election launch taking place as I write, I trust the sewerage authorities in the relevant city have recruited a full quota of both overtime staff and killowatt hours electrical supply to cope with the mega-merde-surge expected down the pipes!

A peruse over the road to see the right-wingnuts still babbling inanities and ‘bemused” at the “in-house cinderella” still with glass slipper firmly inserted, makes one desire to attend and do a little verbal “punching-out” of lights!

TA has never stood by himself. He has always been sheltered; first by his family, now still by his family, as well as his Party, the media and Murdoch. At what stage in his life will be ever take responsiblities for his own actions. It seems never.

At least all Kevin’s kids are speaking to him and involved in his campaign, unlike the Abbott family. Where is Louise? Still refusing to come back from Europe? She doesn’t even get a mention from Tones or his adoring OM camp followers these days.

ABC News didn’t take long
“Election live: day 21The Coalition launches its election campaign, and Kevin Rudd says Labor “got it wrong” on the carbon tax”
And we have Cassidy’s wife to always thank for previously pushing JG to the point of exasperation on the phrase ‘carbon tax”

Geeze the Libs mist have a bucket load of money. Rudd will be lucky to get a couple of packing cases & a sheet of ply for a stage. I thought Australian’s despised this sort of Americanised grand standing.

Barry J, we do not have mutually exclusive positions. And I never said Gillard didn’t make mistakes either.

I also concede that it’s easy for we armchair apparatchiks to see the flaws in something on television.

When confronted with utter stupidity like my meter reader’s “Greenland is a bowl, if the ice melts it will flow back into the interior and make a lake,” I’m like a landed snapper ready for the gutting knife.

But I’m not trying to be Prime Minister, either. Wannabees in that race should be able to do it better than your average Joe.

Actively and voluntarily classifying the ETS as an un-mandated failure that cost the nation dearly, and faintly praising Gillard – who was Prime Minister for several months longer than Rudd – as a good assistant during his time in office was outright stupidity.

We’re left with nothing to vote-1 Labor for: The Libs will say Rudd stuffed up the GFC with Pink Batts, School Halls and Boats, then Gillard stuffed up with Boats again, plus the Carbon Tax.

BOTH times – in 2010 and today in 2013 – Rudd got on Insiders and validated everything that had been said about Labor in government. First his own government and then Gillard’s.